Marketplace security has become a rising concern over recent years. Security and anti-theft concerns have only increased with the pervasiveness of scanners at checkout stations. It has become increasingly frequent for perpetrators to switch and/or alter barcodes so that an item can be obtained for a cheaper price. In addition, many retailers also utilize cameras to catch shop lifters.
Ticket switching refers to situations where the barcode scanned by the checker/clerk (at the point of sale/checkout) into the system is different from the actual barcode of the item. The barcode scanned may be different from the actual barcode of the item being purchased for several reasons: (i) the shopper may have tampered with the actual barcode tagged on to the shopping item; (ii) the checker may be scanning a barcode (e.g., on her wrist) other than what is tagged to the product. Note that in a checkout involving a cashier, this situation may represent the classic case of “sweet hearting”, i.e., the shopper and the cashier collude to commit the ticket switching fraud; and/or (iii) there may be multiple barcodes inadvertently attached to the shopping item. Note that the ticket switching can happen in both cashier-based checkout as well as self-checkout. Currently, alarms are generated whenever an individual discrepancy is monitored. For a large set of items, this could cause many alarms to be generated. This causes an increased need for store attention, and slows down shopper checkout throughput.
In view of the foregoing, there exits a need for a solution that solves at least one of the above-referenced deficiencies in the related art.